Sony has done an excellent job at being transparent with its progress on the bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to a number of Xperia devices. It has kept users aware of what's going on throughout the process, as well as shared alpha and beta builds along the way. Now, though, it looks like the beta days are behind them and the build is ready for prime time for a certain Xperia devices.

Before Sony Ericsson became Sony Mobile, the company seemed committed to developing an Android 4.0 update, going so far as to release alpha ROMs for a number of Xperia devices, and more recently a beta for the Xperia Play. Here we are, a quarter of the way into 2012, and Xperia owners are still gnawing on last year's official Gingerbread. Although, there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel; the Sony Mobile blog has announced that the first Android 4.0 updates will roll out to select Xperia phones in mid-April.

There must be something weird going on with manufacturers lately - first Huawei released an alpha build of ICS for the Honor, and now Sony Ericsson (soon to be just Sony) has released an ICS ROM for certain unlocked Xperia devices, including the Arc S, Neo V, and Ray.

Since it's an alpha ROM, it's not made for day-to-day use, as it is limited to just a few functions at the moment.

At the beginning of August, the CM team announced that they would be supporting the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, arc, and neo. Cyanogen himself has now announced via Google+ that they have joined together with the FreeXperia Team to bring CM7 to seven other Xperia devices in future releases, totaling the number of supported Xperia devices to ten. The full list includes:

Xperia Arc

Xperia Neo

Xperia Mini

Xperia Mini Pro

Xperia Play

Xperia Ray

Xperia X10

Xperia X8

Xperia X10 Mini

Xperia X10 Mini Pro

There's no word on when this update will roll out, but we'll make sure to keep you posted.

Good news, Xperia Play, neo, and arc owners: the worlds greatest custom ROM, CyanogenMod, is coming soon to a device near you! Thanks to some newly submitted code, support for these devices can be expected to hit the CyanogenMod repositories soon, and nightlies will be available shortly after that.

Facing massive infrastructure disruption caused by the earthquake and tsunami last month, Japanese manufacturer Sony has been forced to cut back production on all of its upcoming Xperia devices.

The Xperia PLAY and Arc are both going to be in short supply at launch, just how short Sony Ericsson will come up on shipments is unknown. This could be a massive blow to the much-hyped Xperia PLAY, which Sony has spent a bundle advertising here in the US and abroad.